


You Have No Idea

by cynthia_arrow (thesilverarrow)



Category: Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Always-a-girl, Genderswap, M/M, Sexswap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-14
Updated: 2013-03-14
Packaged: 2017-12-05 06:21:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/719849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesilverarrow/pseuds/cynthia_arrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spencer goes to see Jon in Chicago during a hiatus of his first tour with the band.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Have No Idea

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted to livejournal, many moons ago. I'm simply archiving it here.

It's so warm in his apartment, almost too warm after coming out of the cutting February wind. Her cheeks feel hot when he pulls her into a hug and half spins her around, off her feet a little.  
  
"God, I've been so bored," he says, squeezing her tight, and she can't remember the last time he hugged her like that when it wasn't in the adrenaline after a show. Then he whispers, "I think I've missed the fuck out of you."  
  
She clutches him, too, says something lame she really, really means, and then it's over, everything back to the soft glow of easy smiles again. Except her stomach does this absurd jumping thing.   
  
She'd forgotten. It doesn't seem possible, since that's pretty much all she's been failing at not thinking about the last couple of days, but she kind of had.  
  
The ragged hems of his jeans drag the hardwood floor as he carries her bags down the short hallway to the second bedroom. She can't stop watching his legs move, his hips sway, his shoulders shift under his worn gray t-shirt. As if she never sees him move. Maybe she doesn't; maybe she tries hard not to.  
  
"Didn't expect you until tomorrow," he says.   
  
"Sorry."  
  
"No, it's cool. More Spencer time," he says with a smile. "Oh god, where'd you find a place to put the rental car?"   
  
"Airport. Took a cab in."  
  
"Should've called me."  
  
"It just seemed like less hassle," she says with a shrug.  
  
He nods, then he smiles. "Scared to drive in the city?"  
  
She snorts. "Tired of driving."  
  
"And here I thought the driving was the point. Anyway, I really can't believe you made it in two days."  
  
"And that's even with having to go across Texas on 10 and 20, then up."  
  
"Shit. I wasn't thinking about I-40 being closed in the winter."  
  
"Yeah. In Arizona, at least."  
  
She stands in the doorway and watches him carry in two pillows from somewhere and put them at the empty head of the bed. When he passes her coming back out, he stops and pokes her in the stomach, his finger lingering longer than is strictly necessary.  
  
He grins and says, "I know you're on your big adventure, but I hope you're glad to stop for a while and see me, assface."  
  
She nods and rolls her eyes, tucks herself away in the room under the guise of unpacking. Her fucking hands shake.  
  
When she comes back out, they don't shake anymore, the same way they never shake on the bus.   
  
*  
  
Pretty soon after she gets there, they take a long ride on the train to a pizza joint he likes, and he points out landmarks big and small along the way. He lets her pick toppings. She makes him pick off the black olives.  
  
"You getting bored yet?" he says. "Out there, I mean."  
  
"Brendon and I fuck around nearly every day."   
  
He raises an eyebrow, and her face turns what must be a nice shade of raspberry.   
  
"Playing. My hands get restless."  
  
"Do they?" he says, waggling his eyebrows this time.  
  
"Jesus Christ," she swears, scowling at him. "I hate you."  
  
"You love me," he insists with a small, sly grin; her favorite kind.  
  
"I missed you," she says, and she can really feel it, still, even if she's here with him now. She adds, "So does Bren."  
  
"I talk to him every day. Unlike Ryan."  
  
"Ryan's…"  
  
"I know," he says, as if there were an actual way to end that sentence that would easily explain all the things Ryan Ross is.  
  
She says, "Anyway, that's why Brendon didn't fly out to meet me, meet us."  
  
He nods seriously, then he tilts his head. "Aren't you usually the one saving Ryan from himself?"  
  
"He's capable of taking care of himself," she says, peeling the label on his beer which is mostly her beer, now. "I think he just secretly likes being catered to."  
  
"Not so secretly. What about you?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"Who caters to you?"  
  
"Today," she says, taking a long swig from the bottle, "you."  
  
He just smiles and begins picking at black olives and depositing them pell-mell onto her plate.  
  
*  
  
His living room is like the bus lounge except quieter, and with room to breathe. That makes it infinitely harder at first, to inhabit the couch with him when there are clearly other places she could go.  
  
Somehow, probably because he pulled them there, she ends up with her feet in his lap as Jon restlessly flips stations, so that they watch lovely little snatches of things: infomercials about food processors and exercise equipment, something about Russia on the History Channel, an ancient episode of South Park. Absentmindedly, he rubs her feet like he does sometimes on the bus. But it's making her squirmy now. Squirmier.   
  
Maybe, she thinks, she shouldn't have come. But then a commercial comes on, and Jon lays his head back against the couch and sighs, and suddenly it's like nights on the road when they sit up and have long, serious conversations that only seem to be about nothing.  
  
"I don't know what to do with myself," he says, sighing overdramatically. It sounds suspiciously like a Brendon sigh, but yet he's making a patented Ryan Ross deadpan face. But the deadpan in his voice is all his own: warmly self-deprecatory. "I've been sleeping so much my mother thinks I'm, like, clinically depressed or something."   
  
"It's all that regimented time. You want to have your life back, but when you have it again, you don't know what the fuck to do with it."  
  
"Exactly."   
  
"So, think about it this way," she says. "What have you always said you wished you had time to do but didn't?"  
  
"Sleep," he says with a laugh.  
  
"Beyond that?"  
  
"I don't even know. I used to always say play music. Back before. But now that's what I do. What about you?"  
  
"I wanted to travel by myself."  
  
"Ah, yes," he says, kneading hard at the ball of her foot. "The girl who finally gets out of a bus only to get into a car."   
  
This mocking is nothing she hasn't heard from Brendon and Ryan, since she mentioned her plan a few days ago. Jon was the only one who hadn't mocked her yet.   
  
She adds, "And I wanted to see Chicago."  
  
"Anything in particular in Chicago?"  
  
She just shrugs and gives him an enigmatic smile, and he rubs at her feet a little more concertedly for a time.   
  
They stay up watching TV until he falls asleep. She lies there for a few minutes and watches him, feels the hot weight of his hands on her ankles. She considers just sleeping there with him, but in the end she goes to her room, shifting around just enough as she gets up that it will wake him, just a little.   
  
Impulsively, she leans down and kisses him on the forehead before she retreats, but he's a quick fucker. Eyes still closed, he grabs her by the hand and pulls her down for a hug, wrapping her into the afghan around his shoulders for a moment.  
  
"Let me know if you need anything," he murmurs, eyes still closed.  
  
"I'm good," she says, and she mostly means it. She realizes she maybe wasn't good when she left Vegas, but now that she's come this many miles on her own, now that she's this many miles away…  
  
Now that she's here, she thinks as she crawls between the cool sheets and wraps her arms around herself to get warm. It doesn't take long.  
  
*  
  
She wakes up to a quiet house, to his bedroom door closed. She's oddly happy about that, for now—for her sitting in the window, amusing herself listening to his record player, to quiet things turned up just high enough to hear when you're sitting by the speakers.   
  
She's almost fallen asleep again in his comfy old recliner, clear winter sunshine warming her face, when she feels a hand on her shoulder.  
  
"Hey," he says. "Miles Davis?"  
  
"No, Spencer Smith."  
  
He just snorts.  
  
She says, "Maybe I'm feeling melancholy today."  
  
"That view'll do it," he says with an eye roll.   
  
"It's not so bad," she says. "Different. And I meant melancholy in a good way."  
  
"You wanna hole up here today, then?"  
  
"Nah," she says, stretching her arms back over her head. "I stay here, I'll sleep all day. Let's get out. If you wanna."  
  
"I haven't taken my camera out in a long time."  
  
"Sounds nice. You know, as long as you don't point the thing at me."  
  
"Oh, I think I know your rules by now."  
  
"Rules?"  
  
"Don't fuck with her drumsticks or her shoes. Don't use her shampoo. Don't eat her vanilla pudding cups or her motherfucking poptarts. Don't take her picture."  
  
She just rolls her eyes.  
  
After he stands there beside her, looking out at the world with her for a moment, he says, "Seriously, you alright?"  
  
She plasters on a smile, then she realizes it's not entirely fake. "Yeah. Just feeling contemplative or something."  
  
He just nods. "Hey, you want breakfast? I have cereal or frozen waffles."  
  
"Mmm. Waffles."  
  
He smoothes his hand over her hair for a second then turns up the Miles Davis as he shuffles into the kitchen and begins rattling stuff around. It's just as annoying and comforting as Ryan's morning bus rituals, the emphatic ding of the toaster oven and the pathetic gargle of the coffee machine.  
  
*  
  
Jon takes his camera, but he doesn't take many pictures. They don't talk a hell of a lot, either, just let the wind whip between them as they occasionally point to the beautiful or quirky things around them. They stand for at least fifteen minutes at the shore and watch the water. Spencer can't exactly feel her toes; it should bother her, but it doesn't.  
  
"It's funny," she says as they cross in front of the Art Institute. "I kind of don't mind the hassle and insanity of touring, but when I'm not doing it, I'm not doing it, you know? I think I left Vegas because I needed quiet, and I needed things to be aimless. And alone. For a couple of days, anyway."  
  
"And I factor into your plans for aimless, quiet alone time?" he says, making a face at her, warmly mocking.  
  
"I didn't—" She sucks in a breath and huffs it out. "It's not like I planned it that way. But anyway, I got the alone thing out of my system already, and I can be quiet with you." She hastily adds, smiling, "And you don't seem to mind a little aimlessness in my touristing."  
  
"Nope," he says, ducking his head against a gust of wind. He looks so small huddled over himself with his hands in his pockets. "Even though it takes a crazy person to be aimless in downtown Chicago in the winter."  
  
"We can—"  
  
"Shut up," he says, his eyes a warm, smiling challenge. So she does.  
  
A moment later, he asks, "So, just so I know—is this to be a totally quiet, entirely plan-free sort of visit?"  
  
"I don't know."  
  
"I mean, it can be. Just say the word. Shit, I'd be pretty happy with us laying around my living room listening to my record player."  
  
"I just… I don't know yet."  
  
She puts the question out of her mind for a time, looking blankly at the buildings and cars the same way she vacantly stared at the endless miles of Texas skyline.   
  
When they reach a corner, they have to run to beat the light. It's kind of exhilarating in a way all that fucking driving wasn't.  
  
"Hey," she says. She watches her breath pant out in front of her. "Speaking of music, you know any good record stores?"   
  
"What are you looking for?"  
  
"I don't even know. Maybe something for Ryan."  
  
"Okay," he replies, then he grins, nodding to himself, asking her if she's up for a bit of a walk. She is; obviously, doofus.  
  
At the next street corner, they wait so long he takes several rather artistic shots of an expired parking meter. When he shuffles back toward her, she huddles a little closer to him.  
  
She says, "I could've gone anywhere, okay, but I came this way because I wanted to see you. So I'm not really trying to, like, hide from the world or something. It’s just that I don't exactly know how to come out of my head right now."  
  
"Do you want to?"  
  
She forces herself to think, because he's looking at her like he really wants her to. But she already knows the answer: "Yeah."  
  
"Okay. But, hey, if you don't—"  
  
"Jon," she says, giving him a serious face that constantly threatens to dissolve into a grin. Then she takes his face in her gloved hands and says mock-seriously: "Jon, show me your motherfucking city, man."  
  
"Even the noisy parts?"  
  
"Maybe especially the noisy parts."  
  
"Good," he says, covering his hand with hers for just a second, and she can feel the warmth through he gloves. "Because this record store is definitely not of the quiet. Although we're definitely taking the train, or else I'm afraid your ears will freeze and break off, which would be sad."  
  
"Sad?"  
  
"You have cute ears," he says with a shrug.  
  
So they take the train.  
  
*  
  
Spencer never has cared for smoking up, not even with the boys, so she's relieved when that night Jon drags her out to a hole in the wall club to do some good old fashioned drinking with some of his old friends.   
  
Her feet are a little tired from all their meandering of the city—hell,  _she's_  a little tired from all the meandering—but still, she wears the tallest boots she owns, ones too heavy for anything but the cold cold and looking hot.   
  
Jon keeps looking up to her and saying  _yes, ma'am_  with a sparkle in his eyes. One of his friends says he knows exactly who wears the pants in their relationship. Spencer trips all over herself to explain that, no—it isn't, they aren't.   
  
But Jon's already muttering, "Fuck, yeah." Already, because he's already kind of drunk.  
  
Over the top of her vodka tonic, she smiles at the friend, steadier now somehow, with Jon being Jon.   
  
She says, "You know Jon: he needs someone to show him a firm hand."  
  
The friend elbows Jon in the ribs and clinks his beer bottle against her glass, smiling appreciatively, and just like that, this is easy. She had forgotten new people could be easy. Or people at all, really.  
  
Then Jon murmurs, just at her ear, just like he always indiscriminately tosses innuendo around, indiscriminately with everybody: "I didn't know you were kinky like that, babe."  
  
Sometimes, Spencer thinks God must hate her.   
  
*  
  
Tequila tastes like sharp coughing and medicine tang and sin. Jon's big brown eyes are squinted up, laughing at her as she takes another shot and makes another face.  
  
"No, no, no," his friend Jay says. Jay with the large, wicked eyes—like Brendon if he knew how fucking adorable he was. "Like this, Spence."  
  
He grabs her wrist, warm in his hand, and licks the web between her thumb and finger. She knows what's coming: she waits for him dumbly as he sprinkles on some salt and then he's licking that off rather suggestively before he does his next shot. She thinks it should feel gross, but it's just wet and sticky and now she's feeling too hot, itchy in her skin but floaty at the same time. A nice combination.  
  
As Jay sucks on a lime afterward, she feels Jon suddenly closer at her side.  
  
"Wait, wait," he says, but she doesn't know what the fuck he's telling her to wait for. Then he grabs her hand. She feels just a little dizzy as he does just what Jay did, without the leering. He doesn't have to leer, really, with those goddamn dark eyes of his.  
  
He smiles at her when he's done, then he sucks in a loud breath as she takes his hand and does the same to him, her hands clumsy, her tongue too slow, her head spinning.  
  
It's a lot of tequila they have.   
  
*  
  
He keeps his hands on her hips as they stumble out into the night again. She's so drunk the air doesn't even feel cold, just sharp, open, like the world is too big and everything's too quiet and whatever they do is magnified. So they stop talking, and she can't decide if it's comfortable like it usually is or kind of frightening.  
  
Eventually, in the cab, he thinks of something stupid to tell her and they break up in a fit of giggles, snuggled up clutching each other as if they've just sort of fallen together; but his hand is sliding along her stomach purposely and her face is insistently nudging up into the hollow below his ear. Then all of a sudden, he turns his head and he's kissing her.  
  
His hands jerk up to hold her face still as he licks into her mouth, sucks her bottom lip sort of desperately; and she can't breathe, and she kind of wants to keep laughing because, after all, it's Jon. He feels and sounds and smells like Jon, but he tastes like tequila and, now, her lip gloss.  
  
And it's Jon, she thinks. She's kissing Jon, and his hands are huge and she wants to be in his lap, so she puts herself there.  
  
He stops soon after that, like he thinks he should but doesn't really want to. With his forehead against hers, he mumbles, "Fuck, sorry. Shit."  
  
"I'm not sorry. You're not either, jerkface."  
  
"No, not really," he says, giggling. "Just not how I always thought…"  
  
"You've thought about—?"  
  
And then he's kissing her again.  
  
*  
  
Somehow, they get inside and punch the right floor on the elevator and Spencer fishes his keys out of her purse and she doesn't look at him, really. Because the last time she looked at him, he looked like he knew she was Spencer and it scared the shit out of him.  
  
"Jon?" she says as he's shutting them into his too-warm apartment. She's already unzipping her second boot by then.  
  
His hand on the small of her back startles her. He means to steady her, but it makes her feel more wobbly than she has all night. When she stands up straight in her sock feet, sweeping her long fringe of bangs out of her eyes, she says again, "Jon?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"It’s not how I always thought, either."  
  
He frowns, that nervous-five-year-old frown he makes sometimes, and she's too drunk not to sigh dramatically.  
  
"No," she wails, flailing her arms. He laughs, but she shoves her hands into his chest; and he's still laughing, but then he's clutching her hands then pulling her to his chest kind of seriously, and she can hear his heart hammering.   
  
"No, no, you moron," she mumbles, breathing in his deodorant. "I only meant I've been thinking about it, too."  
  
"Thank god," he says with a thin sigh of air. "Fuck, do I want you."  
  
"Please," she says.  
  
*  
  
They roll around for what seems like hours in sheets that smell like him. It's like being fifteen and afraid to make a move to take your clothes off. His dick ruts up into the hollow at her hipbone, and his hands clutch at her ass, manhandling her down and down and she's a little lightheaded but it's so so good.  
  
She likes the way his neck strains up so his lips can catch hers when she pulls up and away—teasing him or just getting air, she's not sure. It's like the best sort of boring afternoon bus game. They always were in sync for those.   
  
In one way, it's nice, this unending rhythm, this no-destination kind of making out. But the other reality is she's wet and tight and the scrape and drag of two layers of denim is just a little maddening. She starts to unbutton his pants and he stops her with his hands, although she notices how emphatically his hips don't stop moving.  
  
"You're drunk," he says.  
  
"So are you."  
  
"Okay,  _we're_  drunk. We shouldn't be drunk the first time we—"  
  
" _First_  means  _again_ , right?"  
  
His head flops back onto the pillow; his hand has given up stopping hers, but her hands linger at his stomach now, push up under his shirt, finding a soft belly and then the jut of ribs.   
  
"God," he moans. "We're too drunk to talk about relationship stuff."  
  
"But that's what you want?" she says. Maybe, just maybe, her voice squeaks a little.  
  
But then a fingernail scrapes one of his nipples, and his whole body bows up off the bed.  
  
"Oh, God," he moans again. "Fuck. Of course. Want you all the time, everything, but—" He gulps down a breath. "Spencer."  
  
And now, like a bolt of lightning hit her or something, she feels ridiculously sure. Because it's ridiculous, right? But she feels it anyway.  
  
"It's always awkward the first time, right?" she says, trying to concentrate on her words. "Might as well be drunk, too, yeah?"  
  
"That is retarded logic."  
  
"Not logic. Truth."  
  
"But, hey, I don't feel awkward," he says, and his small, warm smile swiftly begins to take over his whole face.  
  
"Neither do I."  
  
She kisses him on the neck, and his hands finally—Jesus, fuck—work up under her shirt, too.   
  
"Second base," she mumbles into his mouth. "Finally." And he tickles her, just a little.  
  
*  
  
He has one condom. One.   
  
She prays.  
  
He needs her nails to get the package open, but then her hands shake a little, and he smirks at her, his eyes not glazed yet, just dark and deep and shining. She glares at him, and he just smirks a little more and slicks a finger inside her, then two fingers, spreading her wet and open, not-so-patiently waiting.  
  
Straddled across his thighs, she watches his eyes, how they roll back in his head when she rolls the condom on. But she hovers over him, waiting for him to look at her again before she even thinks of sinking down.   
  
*  
  
She should've known he would be a talker. It's just that she's never really thought about specifics like that.   
  
Really, it's pretty awesome.  
  
"Oh, fuck, Spencer," he gasps. "Jesus. Oh, God, you're so good. Yeah, fuck," he moans. "Fuck, Spencer. So good, baby. Feels so good."  
  
He pushes his hips up off the mattress, trying to shove himself even deeper. She wishes there was a deeper to take him. Since there's not, she leans over, closer to him, and thrusts her tongue into his mouth.  
  
He still manages to talk despite the kissing. In gasping breaths between, he says her name over and over, and  _fuck_  and  _please_  and, once,  _so beautiful_.  
  
He's also a moaner. She can feel the vibration of it against her neck when he shudders into an upward thrust and clutches her hips so hard he'll leave bruises. Or she hopes so.  
  
*  
  
She hates to say it, but his oral technique needs some work. She blames it on first times.   
  
And probably Jose's to blame, too. Really, now that she thinks about it, she should be thankful he could get it up at all. She files that information away under  _Awesome Things About Jon Walker_.  
  
"Lower," she says. "And slower."  
  
She feels a little like the room's spinning now that she's on her back. His beard scratches at her thighs, and it's not enough yet, but she reminds herself that, fuck, this is Jon. Jon is pressing two fingers inside her where she's wet and hot, and he's licking at her clit.  
  
"Oh God," she says—whines, maybe, because he's taking the hint now, and quickly. "Stop, shit. You don't have to-- Hey, stop, I taste like latex."   
  
She doesn't really mean for him to stop.  
  
"Don't care," he mumbles against her thigh, then he looks up, rubbing his thumb against her clit slow and rough. "God, you're even bossy during sex."  
  
"That a bad thing?" she asks, threading both her hands through his hair as she tries not to shove her hips up too much.  
  
"Hell no," he says.   
  
He watches her from under heavy lids, his pupils blown. He gets her off with his fingers, then he sucks them clean.  
  
*  
  
They won't sleep well sharing a bed. They already know this. Or, more accurately, Brendon and Ryan have told them this.   
  
"I'll kick you," she whines as he pulls her back, spoons her back against his chest.   
  
"Not worried. I can take you."  
  
"Plus, you're gonna be so fucking sick in the morning."  
  
He whines unintelligibly at her and holds her tighter.  
  
She's almost asleep when he suddenly shifts, loosening his grip on her chest even as he snuggles closer, warm and soft and sturdy at her back.   
  
He says, "I'm so glad you're here, you have no idea."  
  
"Me, too."  
  
"You looked so hot in those boots."  
  
"You looked so hot this morning when you stood around in the kitchen in your pajamas making me frozen waffles."  
  
"You looked so hot the day I met you when you were yelling at Ryan about his fucking guitar pedals."  
  
"That wasn't the day you met me," she says.   
  
He's asleep before he can think of what she means.  
  
*  
  
The bathroom clock is stuck on 3:37 the whole time she's in the bathroom throwing up the next morning, but it's daylight outside.   
  
When she comes back out, to go back down the hallway to her own bed, he's sitting up in the bed she just left. He holds out his hand for her to come back.  
  
"You only kicked me like twice," he says, handing her a glass of something bubbly and clear. His face is making a squinty little bleary smile.  
  
She takes a drink first. It's sweet and cold, and it takes the nasty taste out of her mouth.   
  
"Sorry," she says.  
  
"It's okay," he says, taking the glass of Sprite out of her hands and putting it back on the nightstand.  
  
"You gonna throw up anymore?" he asks. He hadn't yet.  
  
"Don't think so. You?"  
  
"I'm good," he says. "Except for my head."  
  
"We're pathetic."  
  
"No, we're vibrant young people."  
  
"Paying the price for being vibrant."  
  
"Apparently."  
  
She smiles and snuggles up around him.   
  
*  
  
A text from Brendon wakes her. It's after one.  
  
 _still in bed_ , she texts back.  
  
Jon blinks at her with bleary eyes.  
  
She says, "Bren says I should get out and see the city."  
  
"Do you wanna?"  
  
"Already seen the city. Besides, I'd rather stay in bed with you."  
  
So they settle back in, but soon a text to Jon's phone wakes them up.  
  
"Fucking Brendon," she mutters.  
  
"Ryan. He wants to know if I'm still asleep. Too."  
  
"God, tell him no," she whines, wanting to save the news until they're face to face again.   
  
A minute or two later, after the phone clatters to his bedside table again, he mumbles in his gravelly sleepy voice, "They're together, then, I guess. So Brendon  _is_  keeping him fed and watered."  
  
"I remember something about a Guitar Hero marathon, maybe."   
  
Jon's snuggled down into the blankets again, maybe even asleep again, when Spencer says suddenly, "What's my ringtone?"  
  
"Wha?"   
  
"I never did know why all Ryan's tones are 'Karma Chameleon.'"  
  
"Long story."  
  
"So what's mine?"  
  
"Tell you later. Sleep now."  
  
"C'mon. Don't make me call your phone."  
  
"Gah," he sighs, flinging himself over onto his back. "It's Joan Jett."  
  
"Joan Jett?"  
  
He mumbles, "'I Love Rock 'n' Roll.'"  
  
She's not sure if she should be insulted by hot-rocker-chick clichés or secretly thrilled. So she kisses his cheek then punches his arm.   
  
She calls his phone anyway, a moment later, just to hear the way the cell phone speaker will distort the chords. She falls asleep in his arms, thinking about the simple but undoubtedly satisfying rhythm of the drums on that track.  
  
*  
  
Half an hour later, Jon's stomach growls. A minute or two later, Spencer's pipes up in sympathy.  
  
"Coffee," he says.   
  
"Coffee, then back to bed."  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"Mmm hmm. And pancakes."  
  
"Your stomach--?"  
  
"Pancakes help. Like, psychically or something, I don't know. Just…"  
  
"Okay. I think I know a place. If you feel like venturing out."  
  
"Pancakes," she insists, so they get out of bed.  
  
She scrubs her face clean while he pulls on his clothes. When she comes out of the bathroom in just her underwear she feels really vulnerable and too naked.   
  
But he's tamping down a grin, looking alternately sheepish and wolfish. It suits him.   
  
"So, um," he says. "So, please don't mistake my gentlemanly conduct this morning for my not wanting to do many, many more dirty things to you."  
  
"Gentleman, my ass. You're just hung over."  
  
"That, too."  
  
He watches her slip back into her jeans from the night before, stale with smoke just like her sweater was, before she goes to her own room to fetch a lighter pair of boots.  
  
"Did I mention the dirty things I want to do to you?" he says as they go out the door.  
  
"Hangover."  
  
"Fuck that."  
  
She giggles.  
  
He says, "No, seriously. We should—"  
  
"Oh!" she blurts out. "Condoms."  
  
*  
  
He's too far away across the table at the diner.  
  
She says, "You know, I didn't really let myself think about it until you were on the other side of the country for like a month, you asshole. Then I couldn't help it."  
  
"Honestly, I thought it would be easier."  
  
"But it wasn't."  
  
"Nope."  
  
She wonders, idly, if pancakes always taste this good, or if it's just Chicago.   
  
Just Jon.  
  
She grins and says, "So, Brendon's pretty much going to be insufferable."  
  
"Actually, I'm way more worried about Ryan."  
  
"You don't really have to be," Spencer says into her orange juice. Jon gives her a face somewhere between skeptical and quizzical, so she adds, "At least it won't be a shock. On my end, anyway."  
  
"Are you serious?" he huffs. "I am going to kick his skinny little ass."  
  
Her eyes go wide, but mostly for comic effect. She chuckles. "No, you're not. He's not playing games. He wouldn't, not with something like this. He really didn't know about you."  
  
"Well, you didn't know about me, either."  
  
"Well, you didn't know about me, either."  
  
She sticks her tongue out at him, but when suddenly he grabs her hands across the table, every hair on her body stands on end.  
  
"God," she says, letting him see her shiver. "This is so not going to be awkwardness free later, is it?"  
  
"Well," he says with a sly smile and a shrug, "it was a genius theory last night, anyway."  
  
"Oh, c'mon," she says, tapping out that Joan Jett rhythm against his palm. "It's not like you wanted to stop, either."  
  
"Wanted, no," he says with a friendly leer. Then he sobers. "But I would have. I really don't wanna fuck this up."  
  
For no good reason, she feels tears come up hot in her eyes, and she laughs as she wipes them off her cheeks.  
  
"I warn you, I'm just a little crazy sometimes," she murmurs, still smiling.  
  
"I already knew that. Besides, show me a woman who isn't."  
  
She kicks him under the table. He just takes her hands back and holds them until she insists that her pancakes are getting soggy in the syrup.  
  
But they're still fantastic pancakes. Really.  
  
*  
  
They move the TV and DVD player into his bedroom, on top of his dresser. They stay in bed the rest of the day, listless and still a little hungover but happy—cuddling and kissing and tickling and lamely wrestling…in their pajamas. It makes it easier.  
  
In the middle of an episode of the O.C. that Spencer has endured enough times to remember lines of dialogue—and for it to have grown on her like a fungus—Jon suddenly rolls over on top of her.  
  
"I kind of think we could go on indefinitely in a cycle of avoidance, since apparently we've been doing that for weeks now, so I've decided to stop being gentlemanly. Is that--?"  
  
She clutches him tight. "Oh, thank God."  
  
*  
  
It's not like they're fifteen this time.   
  
His hands are all over her, but it's like she's not really all the way in her body, feeling it. Maybe, she thinks, she never quite came out of her own head. She's only now beginning to see how many defensive mechanisms she has from touring.   
  
From touring with Jon, specifically.  
  
Desperately, she tugs at his shirt, needing skin. When they're stomach to stomach and his hands are holding the weight of her breasts, she breathes out a long, steady breath and tells herself to feel it, all of it.  
  
It mostly works, and she thinks he senses the shift.  
  
"Spencer," he says, mouth against hers. His finger skims the waistband of her pajama bottoms. "Can I…?"  
  
She watches with wide eyes as he slips them off, and her panties, too. He's too far away again, for a second, and it scares her shitless.  
  
*  
  
"You met me at a huge party Pete threw at his house," she calls into the bathroom where he's disposing of the condom. She's giddy enough now to be a little rambly. Besides, he asked.   
  
"Oh?"  
  
"You don't remember because nobody knew who we were yet. I had a headache, so I didn't say more than three words strung together all night." He comes back out, and she adds with a sheepish eye roll: "And all three of them were probably to William Beckett."  
  
Jon curls back around her and giggles against her neck. "Jesus."  
  
"Obviously, my tastes have changed. I'm so glad you don't remember."  
  
"I was probably drunk."  
  
"A little high, I think."  
  
"Nice. I'm sure I was really charming."  
  
"Straightforward, anyway."  
  
"I didn't, like—?"  
  
"No. God, no. You didn't pay any attention to me, really. I didn't think much about it all, at the time. You were cute. That's about all I noticed."  
  
"Cute?"  
  
"You smile a lot when you're high. And you're kind of handsy. I mean, not with me or anything. Not back then."  
  
"Handsy?" he says, like it's a surprise. "Like, recently handsy?"  
  
She turns over in his arms and says, "Let me put is this way: sometimes, specifically weed times, it's like there are two Brendons on the bus."  
  
"Only one of the Brendons gets you clinging to him, though."  
  
"Of course I don't sit in your lap and shit. The other Brendon's not nearly so frustrating."  
  
"Oh," he says, eyes sliding shut as a smile blooms on his face.   
  
"Yeah, oh," she murmurs, shoving against his chest. "God, you're a moron."  
  
He nods and smiles, then the smile turns a little smug: "Speaking of frustrating morons—if you got high with us more often, this might've happened a lot sooner."  
  
"Fuck," she mutters.   
  
He giggles at her, then he says, "I mean, shit. I've been thisclose to kissing you for weeks now."  
  
She sighs and lets him pull her into a kiss, and it feels like another first, at least in the way it makes her jittery and warm all over.  
  
When he pulls back, she's talking without thinking, perhaps without really breathing: "Come back to Vegas with me when I fly out Friday."  
  
He doesn't think either. "Okay."  
  
"It's pretty cold at night—I mean, not Chicago cold, but chilly—but it's in the sixties during the day. You can bring your flip flops."  
  
He pulls her up onto his chest and strokes the short hair at the nape of her neck, chuckling warm and soft:  
  
"I really don't plan on leaving the bed much, but that's good to know."  
  
*  
  
She wakes up in the middle of the night to the feel of his callused fingers over the small of her back.  
  
"Hey," she says.  
  
"Didn't mean to wake you."  
  
"'Sokay. Can't sleep?"  
  
"I sleep too much," he says. "I need to fucking do something."  
  
She throws an arm around him and lays her head on his chest. She says, "You know, I like you and all, but I'm so not waking up enough to fuck right now."  
  
"Not what I meant," he says with a snort. "Although…"  
  
She pinches him and squirms closer.  
  
When they settle down again, he says, "With myself, I meant. My life. This boring bullshit 'me' time. We've still got a month before we hit the road again."  
  
"We could always hit the road sooner than that."  
  
"What?"  
  
"Well, we could always rent a car."  
  
"And drive back to Vegas?"  
  
"Drive anywhere," she says, although the idea of going back to Vegas sounds nice now. Going back with Jon.  
  
"Except on I-40."  
  
"And 80 and 90. And probably 70."  
  
"Okay," he says.  
  
"Yeah? I mean, you want to?"  
  
He nods. "Can I drive?"  
  
"If I can pick the music."  
  
He smiles at her skeptically, so she pinches him hard in the soft place just above his hipbone.  
  
"Okay," he says, gasping out a chuckle and tightening his arms around her. "Deal."


End file.
